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Bonobos – Making Love not War

If you think sex solves everything, then you’re probably channelling you inner Bonobo. This week, Catalyst takes a fascinating and provocatively close up and personal look at our lesser known human relative. They may look a lot like chimpanzees, but bonobos couldn’t be more different from their aggressive, male dominated cousins. The females run the show, and if there’s any hint of conflict, they round everybody up for a giant orgy – which has all been caught on film by researchers deep in the Congo. What’s more – astonishing new behavioural research is raising a challenging question. Are chimpanzees the wrong model for human evolution? Did we all start out by making love not war?

TRANSCRIPT

Narration: These animals are being thrown some tasty food. Watch closely what happens next. Yes, they’re making love. And they’re going to keep making love for the next half hour.

These are Bonobos – and they’re challenging our understanding of the very evolution of human nature. Did we all start out by making love – not war?

Vanessa Woods is a primatologist. Normally, she’s to be found in Africa, filming her team’s research.

Vanessa Woods: Here they come through there.

Narration: But today she’s in Sydney to introduce me to our more familiar near relative – the chimpanzee.

Vanessa Woods: It’s a very male dominated society, the females don’t have very strong bonds. And the males as you can see, they’re a lot stronger, they’re a lot bigger, they’ve got bigger muscles. And yeah, they keep the females sort of trodden down.

Narration: As this disturbing footage shows, chimpanzees will deliberately hunt, torture and kill their own species.

And this is the model that’s long shaped our understanding of the origins of human nature. Our ancestors, were aggressive and dominated by big tough males.

But there is another human relation – one that until recently, we’d heard very little of.

That’s because it lives deep in the forest of one of the most dangerous places on earth.

But when scientists were able to get in to the Congo, they found in the heart of this war ravaged nation an island of utopian peace.

Dr Brian Hare: The character of the Bonobo is extraordinarily different. They absolutely are upset if there is any hint of aggression in the group. They’re female dominated so females actually work together to ensure there’s never any trouble in the group.

Narration: Dr Brian Hare is one of the world’s leading primatologists.

As he’s seen for himself, Bonobos have an unusual means of keeping the peace.

Dr Brian Hare: Bonobos use sex as a social lubricant so if there’s any kind of trouble in the group, the females round everybody up and they basically have a giant orgy.

Vanessa Woods: So they all have sex – the males have sex with the males, females have sex with females, the old are having sex with young and they just – its incredible. You’re kind of looking at it going – wow – yeah that’s – that’s one way to do it. Laugh.

Narration: It’s a philosophy that clearly influenced Brian and Vanessa – who met in Africa and promptly married.

But were bonobos really a better model for human evolution than chimpanzees? Time to put our relatives to the test.

Vanessa Woods: What we’re doing today is measuring their temperature to see how they react to something that’s new. So Brian over there is going to be under the sheet, and he’s going to show (this chimpanzee) a puppet.

Narration: The scientists used an ingenious way of measuring fear – basically if the chimp is afraid, the right ear heats up because the right brain is activated.

Vanessa Woods: Churinga’s right ear is 35.2

Narration: It turned out chimpanzees and bonobos are both frightened of puppets. But see what happens next. This chimpanzee is being played a recording of a chimp call from another tribe … The same experiment is repeated with bonobo calls. Chimps were scared of strangers … but bonobos weren’t at all – in fact they were curious.

Dr Brian Hare: We think that reflects a lot about their social behaviour in that where chimps can receive a lot of aggression from a stranger whereas bonobos if you see a stranger its if anything its going to be a fun and interesting encounter.

Narration: So what has all this got to do with how humans evolved?

Well, the next experiment was the clincher.

Brian is about to show me a test of how well two animals cooperate. Watch carefully.

Dr Brian Hare: So, Jonica, here’s how it works. There’s food on a platform, its out of reach, and we provide them with a rope that if they both pull on either end of the rope, they can get the food. The problem is if you only pull one end of the rope you end up with only rope.

Narration: First up, the chimps.

Dr Brian Hare: So here we go – So we give them the rope and then oh, that female says get out of my way but she’s just messed up. Coz her partner just left. And no food today.

Dr Jonica Newby: No bananas

Dr Brian Hare: No bananas

Dr Jonica Newby: fail.

Narration: Chimps are smart enough to work this out, trouble is, they often fail because they just don’t trust their companion. Now for the bonobos.

Dr Jonica Newby: Oh – straight away.

Dr Brian Hare: It ends up that bonobos, like chimps are very skilled at solving the problem. Unlike chimps, its very easy to pair bonobos with anyone in the group. They’re not constrained by who they are with.

Dr Jonica Newby: So its pretty much universal cooperation.

Dr Brian Hare: Yeah.

Narration: When you look at the super- cooperation necessary to build human society, could it ever have happened if our trust of each other was as low as the chimpanzee?

Dr Brian Hare: So probably one of the first things that had to happen in our evolution is that we had to become more bonobo like.

Narration: And extraordinarily, it’s just been discovered all these differences may be largely explained by a single gene – a social gene that acts via a neuropeptide called vasopressin.

Dr Brian Hare: When you have certain levels of this neuropeptide you’re so much more likely to be social and you’re much less likely to be aggressive.

Narration: It turns out Bonobos have the sociable gene version, whereas chimpanzees don’t.

And humans? Believe it or not, our gene pattern for vasopressin is much more like those jungle peaceniks, bonobos.

Vanessa Woods: With chimpanzees we’ve really only been getting half the picture, so on one hand you’ve got this male dominated aggressive society and then with bonobos you’re got this female dominated make love not war society and I just think that to understand who we are as humans you’re got to look at both, you definitely need both for the whole picture.

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Garrett Jones - 17 Oct 2008 8:16:45pm

In my book, "COMING CLEAN ABOUT BISEXUALITY" I argue that unless we human males can be as intelligent about sex as the Bonobo, we shall never learn the utter folly of war. The book is available for free download from http://www.garrettjones.talktalk.net